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= .. = ara aT ea a - _ - ae a pou 4 si R. EISENHOWER HAS NAMED FOUR of the nine members of the present court. Seniority of some of the remaining members (Justice Frank- furter, 74, Justice Black, 71, Justice Burton, 6%) makes it likely that the President may appoint others. Retired. justices get a pension of $35,000 a year. Some believe that President Kisen- hower will have a greater ultimate im- pact on domestic history through his appointees to the high court. than through his political and administrative policies, : % chine whose mem kind of Univac of historic precedents, push a button, a nd produce a calculable of the members themselves in this very human juridical-political body. ; , Nobody can deny that the climate of the court has recently changed, This climate depends in part:on the atmos- : lows “th’ iNiction returns” maintained ° Mr, Dogley) and in part on the liberal- conservative components . among the nine. oot ~ ' | New appointments change the balance within the tribunal. Franklin D. Roose- velt’s battle with the court brought “the switch in time that saved the nine,” engineered by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes which defeated the | Rogjevelt. court-packing plan but, it | = a ee ean - fingfly ended with the appointment iby the President of a new court majority. Mr, Eisenhower’s appointees—p ularly the Chief Justice—have already The Supreme Court fs not a dull bss: bers feed cases into a , result. Much depends on the personalities _ phere outside the court (the court fol- waft ne shifted the balance in the tribunal. It is interesting to note that Chief Justice Warren has increasingly found himself on the side of the two so-called “lib- erals,” Justices Black and Douglas. (An outstanding feature of the term just con- cluded was the number of times that Messrs. Warren, Black, and Douglas ‘ dissented together. There were 11 such combinations, in six of these they were joined by Associate Justice Brennan. The most frequent combinations of dissenting justices were those of Justices Black Do , 21 times; and Justices ~ ireaktorer “and Harlan, also paired 21 ~ fmesy Major Shift Seen . ualified ervers believed the Warren” aa secisions mark a major shift in approach to constitutilnal ssues. The new court is handing d @ most liberal decisions in a dec Attention centers on the Chief Justice _ among the four latest appointees. _. | - " While the merits of the school desegr | gation case will be debated for decade , wthrevtER of a neophyte Chiet Justice in inducing his strikingly ‘individualistic h and articulate associate justices to slong with him unanimously on the tre- men ous Opinion is almost unrivaled in ‘Ory, ; «It should be understood that there fs among others—an ancient fission with- . 4n the court: it is between authority and l litverty, the rights of th and the rights of the individual, Ta such conflicts one group of judges normatly supports the another tends to emphasize the second, Chief Justice Fred Vinson generally came down on the side of officialdom, Chief Justice Warren Douglas and Black) appears to start with a predisposition toward the in- dividual, . The court has always held the balance tween these two sets of rights with one era emphasizing one, another the sec~ ond. After a security-conscious genera -tion in which state authority was put foremost the pendulum has now swung back a bit. ; John Lor tim “A review of these decisions’ (of the Past generation) establishes the discon- certing and perhaps startling fact that in no case has the court liberalized or ex- tended the freedoms guaranteed by the (First Amendment ta the) Constitution, The general trend has been in the direc= tion of sustaining, in the interest of na-. tional security, new. restrictions upon those liberties.” . ; Trend Reversed |’ Now the trend has changed, Courts, congressional committees, and goyern- mental agencies are rapped for trans- gressing the four freedoms against in- dividual rights. An outcry has followed. But it should be remembered that there | have been outcries against the court beforg. mo, ue, . Tiffe and new appointees “keep, the an ‘leo ultimately in Une with pulfic | | Opinion, while the court itself powdb- ’ fully influences the opinion to which it’ finally bows. Vitriolic attacks orf the court might produce dangers worse, it is argued, than those seen in the court's opinions; no change in our institutions p judicial interpretation could. @ £0 Tadica urt itself, as the degradation of the The four Elsenhower appointees 4 i Earl Warren, former Governo of, California, one-time GOP presideftial’ ossibllity, and a man with impregive: Record as administrator though witHout} Btlor judigial experjence. 4 roduced by weet e state ; (along with Justices d O'Brian commented some . ¢ ago in the Harvard Law Review: -- Sy ''~ John M. Harlan, Rhodes Scholar with; a@ long and successful career New: York lawyer,. friend of former \Wew' York Governor Dewey, Air ° Clone! 1943-45; briefly a federal appa- Jate‘judge in New York, ' . . ; Wikiem J. Brennan, New Jersey ' Democrat and only Roman Catholic on the court, with long experience as lawyer | and justice in state courts, 3 Charles E, Whittaker, Missouri Repub- lican who gave up a lucrative law prac-, tice in 1954 to became district judge for western Missouri; for 25 years an cute’ standing Midwestern trial lawyer, and | onetime state Bar Association president, ' The other five members of the court; are (1) former Alabama Senator Hugo! A. Black, who, with (2} William ©. Douglas, (former head of the Securities, and Exchange Commission) tend to put their predilection for the rights of the individual ahead of the rights of the state, (3): Felix Frankfurter, former Harvard Jaw teacher and government | servant on the court since 1639, who: occupies a sort of center position in ilosophy; and (4) Tom C. Clark, fotmer Truman attorney general; and. {5} Harold H, Burton, former law teach er, Yayer of Cleveland and Republican. . senator from Ohio, who form the “con- servative nucleus” of the court. It is in the hands of these strildngly disparate and individualistic dgures t present constitutional decisions rest." It. is a paradox that President Eisenhower, a conservative, has named men who have helped tip the court balance to the “lib- eral” side, while the four previcus ap~ pointees of supposedly “left-wing” Mr, ATuman-—Justices Vinson, Burton, Clark, and Minfon-—were definitely “conserva-. tive,” “ : . - os 3 Historic incidents abound to show that’: a chief executive does not always know - what legal views he is getting when he names a man to the court. Mr, Chief Justice Warren came to the court four years ago. Many thought he would he a conservative or at least 9 middle-roader, This has not occurred, at least by one yardstick, This is the yard- stick of dissents. - Ta ’ In these the Chief Justice has been - increasingly. associated with Justices _ Black and Douglas, the “liberal nucleug” , on the court. In his first year the Chief Justice was on the opposite side from . Justice Black a score of times, the niet year about a dozen times, later & few times, and in the term: just clued, aut of some 13 dissents he assigiated with Justice Black in all b one, “0 : oe i we ‘ er wr